Exploring the Foundations and Paradigms of AI for Databases

Speaker: Gao CONG
Nanyang Technological University (NTU)

Title: Exploring the Foundations and Paradigms of AI for Databases

Date: Monday, 21 July 2025

Time: 4:00pm - 5:00pm

Venue: Lecture Theater F (Leung Yat Sing Lecture Theater), near lift 25/26, HKUST

Abstract:

With the convergence of data and AI, the database community has actively explored two key directions: leveraging AI to tackle challenges in database systems (AI4DB) and developing data systems to support AI applications. This talk will first cover AI4DB, focusing on the following topics: 1) Query Plan Representation as a foundation of AI4DB, serving as input for various AI4DB tasks. 2) Paradigms of AI4DB — We discuss "Replacement," aiming to learn machine learning (ML) models to replace traditional components (e.g., learned indexes), and "Enhancement," aiming to apply ML to improve existing database components (e.g., optimizing indexes without replacement). 3) LLMs for Query Rewriting — A brief introduction to using large language models (LLMs) in query optimization. The talk will then briefly explore the development of data systems to support AI applications.

Biography:

Gao Cong is currently a Professor in the College of Computing and Data Science at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), and is the head of Division of Data Science of NTU. He previously worked at Aalborg University, Microsoft Research Asia, and the University of Edinburgh. His current research interests include AI4DB, spatial data management, spatial-temporal data mining, and recommendation systems. His citation in Google Scholar was over 20,000 with H-index 73. He received the best paper runner-up awards at the WSDM'20 and WSDM'22 conferences for two of his research papers. He is an associate editor for ACM Transactions on Database Systems (TODS), IEEE TKDE, and the vice Chair of ACM KDD Singapore chapter.